[patio11]

Am I really generating N sandwiches worth of value every few minutes?

Yes, you really are. We're programmers and businessmen -- our value scales waaaaaay the heck out of proportion to the amount of time we spend on something. I think that is awesome. (If I was a big proponent of income equality, I'd really hate it. I can do an honest day's work while sleeping by setting a system in motion to do it for me -- no manual laborer will ever be able to do that, which suggests that I will make rather more money than them, by a lot, and the gap is going to get larger over time.)

[mrtron]

As awesome as it is for us, it is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in asia.

I am pro capitalism, but the current system does have pretty deep social costs. [a second caveat being I can suggest no superior practical alternative]

[patio11]

it is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in asia.

No, poverty is incredibly shitty for the folks working in sweatshops in Asia. Nike didn't invent poverty. It got there a long time before Nike -- or America, or the nation of China for that matter. Poverty is the natural state of the human condition.

For most of human civilization, we've had societies where almost everyone was desperately poor and then a few people were marginally less poor. (Poor Americans eat better and have better healthcare than European aristocrats from a few centuries ago. Plus, they don't defecate in buckets they sleep next to, which is a plus.)

The newfangled innovation brought about by capitalism isn't poor people: its rich people. Rich people who are so overflowing with money they buy frivolous shoes, enabling some Chinese peasant to get off the farm. Chinese peasants are pretty much in favor of getting off the farm -- it gives their kids a much better shot at surviving to the age of 5, and means you don't have to deal with famine.

[cia_plant]

In what sense do poor Americans eat better than European aristocrats from a few centuries ago?

[patio11]

More calories, more variety, more cheap GMO tomatoes in their store-bought sauces and ketchup (European aristocrats thought tomatoes were poisonous -- hah, hah, funny right? Funny like scurvy, a constant scourge of all social classes back then), cleaner drinking water (!), less food-borne pathogens, less periodic bouts of famine, less dependence on seasonal variation in available food sources, hot and cold food available on demand.

[cia_plant]

Your points about health are reasonable, but I don't think the modern diet really has more variety than the Medieval aristocrat's did. The kinds of meals eaten by the upper classes back then would still be considered extremely luxurious today.

[pg]

A middle class person today can if they choose have a much more varied diet than anyone could in medieval times. Even as recently as the 19th century it was an extraordinary luxury in northern Europe to have fresh fruit or vegetables in the winter, for example.

And of course medieval Europe did not have any of the species they later got from the Americas: no potatoes, peppers, corn, tomatoes. There was no coffee or tea or chocolate either. And no ocean fish unless you lived close to the sea.

If you were a rich person in medieval times you could basically have a much roast beef as you wanted. (That was apparently Charlemagne's undoing.)

[shard]

Just consider variety in terms of ethnic foods. No Medieval aristocrat had easy access to Indian/Chinese/Thai/Japanese/Korean/Mexican/Greek/Ethiopian/French/Italian/Brazilian/Cajun/Cuban/Vietnamese/Taiwanese food, all of which are available within a half hour drive from my house.

[nazgulnarsil]

in the sense that they aren't malnourished, like a huge percentage of the population used to be, causing widespread disease.

[cpach]

Diseases are still spreading, albeit of different kinds. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Epidemiology_... https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Diabetes_mell...

[BearOfNH]

The newfangled innovation brought about by capitalism isn't poor people: its rich people.

This is an excellent aphorism. I wish I'd been the first to put it that way!